Third party Steam Controller software. Part 2 – My take on it.

In part one of this two-part article, I went over what we have seen in the first year and a bit since the Steam Controller has launched, in terms of hardware mods and (mostly third party) software for it.

One of the programs discussed was my project “GloSC“, that I want to go more in depth on in this part two.

You’re going to see code and assembly here.
If that’s up your alley you might wanna grab a cup of coffee and make yourself comfortable as it’s gonna be a bit of a read.
Otherwise, you’re welcome to stay, too!

Continue reading “Third party Steam Controller software. Part 2 – My take on it.”

Third party Steam Controller software. Part 1 – State after a year

It’s been well over a year since Valve has released their little beasty of an input device dubbed “Steam Controller”.
When Valve first announced it and stated that this thing should be as hackable as possible, I naturally got excited about the device and so I’ve picked one up short after launch.

About a month after launch, I wrote up a general overview of the controller here.
In the article I briefly touched on the software development side of things, stating that I’d wish for an open API.
I concluded that it’s going to be interesting to see how things shake out,
and ended with this quote from Valve from the original Controller announcement.

“The Steam Controller was designed from the ground up to be hackable… We plan to make tools available that will enable users to participate in all aspects of the experience, from industrial design to electrical engineering.”

Continue reading “Third party Steam Controller software. Part 1 – State after a year”

Hacking and Modding Windows Universal Apps and Games (UWP)

There are a lot of misconceptions about Windows 10 UWP Apps.
Most people think that you can’t do anything to them, in terms of modding or hacking.

Well, this is not true at all.

In fact, you can do a whole heck of a lot with them and have fun in all sorts of ways. Including to mod the shit out of them.
Continue reading “Hacking and Modding Windows Universal Apps and Games (UWP)”

A better commandline experience on Windows

Lets face it, the default command line in Windows is pretty bad.
The terminal and the shell are functional, sure. But they’re not very comfortable to use and have a lot of problems.
There is “Powershell” however, which makes things better. But is it really that comfortable to use if you’re used to what is available on Linux / Mac?

For different shells like bash, and other GNU and Open Source tools there is, in Win10 insider builds at least, the “Windows subsystem for Linux” (WSL).
But that has its problems.

While you can access and modify all of your windows file, you cannot run a windows executable from WSL bash. Bummer…

Besides that, at the time of writing, you have to use Windows Insider builds for Win10 and not a full army of whatever might scare you will bring me to use them.

Of course, you can use “cygwin” to have bash or a different shell and run a set of popular GNU and other Open Source tools  on windows, just like WSL, sure.
And with cygwin you also have access to all of your windows files and you even can run windows executables from bash.
But still, it also has its problems.

Everyone of these “solutions” to make the command line experience on Windows better isn’t quite ideal.
All of them, pretty much, suffer from the same problem:
The terrible, terminal on Windows and its limited capabilitys.
There have been some improvements to the terminal though, but it’s still not optimal.

Continue reading “A better commandline experience on Windows”

Steam Controller – Perspective of a computer science student

I really got excited about the Steam Controller and the kind of gaming it could enable, when Valve first announced it and stated that this thing should be as hackable as possible.

My excitement didn’t change through all the revisions it went trough, but I’m still disappointed that the touchscreen was scrapped, for better or for worse.

I recently received mine, and no doubt, it’s an amazing piece of hardware Valve has put together.
And I’m pretty sure the lack of a touchscreen is for the better.

In this blog post i will give a general review in terms of gaming, address some issues, also regarding emulators, and finally touch on the more technical developing side of things and the inner workings of this piece of hardware.

Going to be a lot to read, so make yourself comfortable and maybe grab some coffee.

To clarify: computer science student means, I am currently getting a degree in computer science at a university of applied sciences.
The title is meant to indicate that I’m not afraid of tinkering and that I will also touch on a bit more technical side of the Steam Controller.
As it stands right now, there isn’t all that much to say about this, though.

Continue reading “Steam Controller – Perspective of a computer science student”

std::cout << "Hello World!";

Welcome to the “behind flatspot-pictures” blog.
Contrary to what the name might let you predict, this is not a behind the scenes blog about some artist / art-project named “Flatspot-Pictures”.
It’s a tech-blog.
A tech-blog from a computer science student (I hope the super awesome blogpost-title let you guess this…) who incidentally is a photography and photoshop nut and does his art by name of Flatspot-Pictures.
To clarify: computer science student means, I am currently getting a degree in computer science at a university of applied sciences.

I created this blog because I wanted some place, where I feel home, to talk, rant and ramble about stuff that interests me in the tech-world
and also share some of my tech related projects that I do when not pretending to be an artist.
So that is pretty much what you can expect here.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t see any artsy stuff here. But I don’t know for sure yet.

I’m relatively new to blogging myself, so please bear with me. It can only get better from here.